Peer Support Sessions
donation-based
I offer individual peer support sessions for people who know me from a private context or anyone who needs flexible support and can't afford therapy. Peer support is entirely donation-based and the amount of sessions I can offer depends on my availability. Please contact me via email ([email protected]) or via the contact form below to discuss if we feel comfortable to peer-session together before booking an appointment! Please also read the text below for more information on peer support sessions.
Ginkgo Girls by Chiomma Hall
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We live in a world in which people who are practitioners of healing and support need to start using their skills to enhance peer support and community building. The idea to offer peer support sessions resulted from different friends joking around that they wished they could do therapy with me. I wanted to offer them a place in which they could feel safe to express themselves in whatever way they needed to, but also noticed how during private meetings there was not enough time nor the right frame to do this. Hence, I decided to offer a structured way of supporting my peers in the same way I want to support my therapy participants.
There is a weird and rigid separation of therapeutic and personal relationships in Western mental health, and this is mostly to avoid harm for care seeker, but can actually inhibit healing and well-being in marginalized communities.* This doesn't mean that peer support doesn't entail necessary and important boundaries, it just means deconstructing colonial ways of helping each other and building new ways of existing in this world. |
Peer support sessions will not include a therapeutic contract, but will still focus on the release of rage, grief, madness, or whatever else may be stuck inside of you and needs to get out. They will aim to guide you towards liberation-oriented solutions and reinstill hope and possibilities to live a liberation-oriented life. They can be irregular or regular, long-term or short-term and are entirely donation-or trade based (e.g. you can donate money for the session or we may trade skills, or you may trade the session(s) with a piece of your art or something alike, etc.). Peer support sessions can be booked here. Simply click on book appointment and choose Peer Support Session and a day and time that suits you. You will need to sign up via the 'client portal' to book a session, but you can also message me on Whatsapp or via email to arrange an appointment. Don't forget to contact me before booking a session so we can discuss if we feel comfortable to peer session together :)
*I want to quote Julie Tilsen (from her Chapter "Is that unethical or just queer? - An Ethical Stance for a Queered Practise" in Queering your Therapy Practice), who expresses how within marginalized communities, multiple relationships and roles are common, unavoidable, and can contribute to healing:
"The problem with the cautions against multiple relationships is the conflation of avoiding multiple relationships with avoiding exploitation and harm. In practice, unwise or unethical therapists routinely exploit or abuse some of their clients within allegedly safe contexts of the very private professional therapeutic relationship. There is no evidence that avoiding multiple relationships actually keeps these therapists from abusing their power and positions. In fact, the opposite is true [...]: the greater the isolation, the greater the chance of an abuse of power. [...]. [...] assuming that therapists can and should avoid multiple relationships is a privilege of some practitioners' distance from the lives of the clients and normalizes this distance as a measure of professionalism. Questioning what constitutes professional behavior is a very queer project, inasmuch as it's part of interrogating power operations and challenging normative ideas. [...] Valuing relationship, community, and interconnectivity is a hallmark of many communities - as well as of basic human happiness. With marginalized communities, it is also often central to survival. [...] As a member of statistically small and politically marginalized sub-population - and as someone who shows up regularly at community and social events - it's inevitable that I'll have some connections with some of the people who seek my services. [...] Working with a therapist who is a member of one's own community, and who shares social locations and lived experiences, can be especially helpful and healing. This is particularly true when your identity has been weaponized against you - and when you have been blamed for the distress you experience. This separation of individual from their community and cultural homes is a long-standing tactic of colonial and capitalist systems of oppression. [...]. Seen through a queer-informed lens, our current professional policies on multiple relationships actually serve to police queer and trans communities. They may also inhibit health and healing. [...]"
"The problem with the cautions against multiple relationships is the conflation of avoiding multiple relationships with avoiding exploitation and harm. In practice, unwise or unethical therapists routinely exploit or abuse some of their clients within allegedly safe contexts of the very private professional therapeutic relationship. There is no evidence that avoiding multiple relationships actually keeps these therapists from abusing their power and positions. In fact, the opposite is true [...]: the greater the isolation, the greater the chance of an abuse of power. [...]. [...] assuming that therapists can and should avoid multiple relationships is a privilege of some practitioners' distance from the lives of the clients and normalizes this distance as a measure of professionalism. Questioning what constitutes professional behavior is a very queer project, inasmuch as it's part of interrogating power operations and challenging normative ideas. [...] Valuing relationship, community, and interconnectivity is a hallmark of many communities - as well as of basic human happiness. With marginalized communities, it is also often central to survival. [...] As a member of statistically small and politically marginalized sub-population - and as someone who shows up regularly at community and social events - it's inevitable that I'll have some connections with some of the people who seek my services. [...] Working with a therapist who is a member of one's own community, and who shares social locations and lived experiences, can be especially helpful and healing. This is particularly true when your identity has been weaponized against you - and when you have been blamed for the distress you experience. This separation of individual from their community and cultural homes is a long-standing tactic of colonial and capitalist systems of oppression. [...]. Seen through a queer-informed lens, our current professional policies on multiple relationships actually serve to police queer and trans communities. They may also inhibit health and healing. [...]"